I think most metro areas are underdeveloped, and that inner ring suburbs should look more like a collection of small cities and neighborhoods. But yes if everywhere were allowed to grow it probably wouldn't feel extreme
Yeah - those are the places that might actually change transformatively. I don't believe, for example, that Arlington, VA would have many single-family suburban neighborhoods in the absence of zoning. It would naturally be an extension of D.C. What we're seeing is the original iteration (from the 1920s in some cases!) being held in place via regulation.
yes - i am sure the outlying suburbs would exist with single family homes, because i do think highways and big yards and park and rides are both appealing and manageable at a certain scale. But I wonder just how much less far out they'd be had we not forced single family zoning on so much of the urban area.
This is where the libertarian bent doesn't jive with me - do private developers really have the best interests at heart in contrast to judges and city councilmembers? There's an anthropological assertion in libertarianism that says that people usually equally and randomly wrong, so it's better to have many people duke it out in the free market, where the "best" can win - but isn't that the same attitude that got us in this situation?
Now the same goes in reverse, I wouldn't necessarily trust judges and city councilmembers more than developers. It's not a problem of finding the right power structure that can operate without people being virtuous - it's how to operate virtuously. That's what stuck out to me when I saw the Strong Towns explanatory videos: it's people working together and having open, local discussions that remind me more of open-source software library "town hall" meetings than physical in-person town hall meetings - there's an understanding of the common good and a genuine freedom to be wrong when discussing with others.
I don't think planners/local govt. have no role. Especially where things like climate/infrastructure are issues (someone commented re Florida - that sounds like a legit concern to me.) I guess to some extent the form of growth is fine to regulate. I'm trying to make the point that there's no real way of determining when a place has "enough" development because most of the mature urban settlements we do have in America arose organically. Zoning as currently written has closed off our ability to allow that process to happen now.
Ok, yeah - so if I understand you, "enough growth" is not the right question because you're telling this Connecticut resident that it's not like there's a master plan to attain. A master plan would still imply what you're speaking against, which is a default "no more growth" stance which is broken by pockets of growth. Maybe two other metaphors might be growth like it happens in the body, for example, with constant replenishment of nutrients and cells, and in instances of strain (working out?) there is a different kind of growth that isn't simply maintenance. Or perhaps like a family, with slow growth of people punctuated by births and weddings.
Btw here in the FL panhandle, “over development” means poor planning. There’s been a lot of building in the last few years. Older homes with larger yards have been knocked down to build larger homes with smaller yards. We live near a very swampy area and those undeveloped and underdeveloped lots used to absorb the (very heavy) rain. Now our infrastructure is getting heavily taxed. Also, builders are building big fancy houses selling for over half a million dollars. We have pretty low crime (at least the violent type) and the city can’t afford to pay police officers enough to live here. I’ve been free market for most of my life, but seeing an important demographic of our economy blithely ignored has shaken my confidence in free market economics. We live between a military base and a resort area and those industries rely heavily on workers who don’t make six figures. It’s as you’ve said before—the bottom rings are getting cut off the ladder. We were only just getting by last year on a government service job (we’re a single income family) until my husband went into private industry.
There may be environmental reasons for reduced development - we have a part of Fairfax County with large minimum lots and stuff for water issues. Those can be used as excuses for NIMBYism but at least some of the time they're real concerns.
Is zoning a political issue in your locality? Is there any multifamily going up or just these big teardown-rebuild houses?
There are complexities here, to be fair. Monopolization and over-reliance on dubious conventional wisdom leading to every developer targetting the same demographics in a given area (though of course the zoning and related laws that prevent adaptive reuse are almost certainly part of the cause there), or wealth disparity and status displays leading to theoretically "high value" apartments that see little to no use and contribute negligibly to the local economy. The housing market, like that for education or health care, is more prone to failure than a true consumer market (especially when arranged in a way that demends new permanent structures more or less continuously).
I think most metro areas are underdeveloped, and that inner ring suburbs should look more like a collection of small cities and neighborhoods. But yes if everywhere were allowed to grow it probably wouldn't feel extreme
Yeah - those are the places that might actually change transformatively. I don't believe, for example, that Arlington, VA would have many single-family suburban neighborhoods in the absence of zoning. It would naturally be an extension of D.C. What we're seeing is the original iteration (from the 1920s in some cases!) being held in place via regulation.
yes - i am sure the outlying suburbs would exist with single family homes, because i do think highways and big yards and park and rides are both appealing and manageable at a certain scale. But I wonder just how much less far out they'd be had we not forced single family zoning on so much of the urban area.
This is where the libertarian bent doesn't jive with me - do private developers really have the best interests at heart in contrast to judges and city councilmembers? There's an anthropological assertion in libertarianism that says that people usually equally and randomly wrong, so it's better to have many people duke it out in the free market, where the "best" can win - but isn't that the same attitude that got us in this situation?
Now the same goes in reverse, I wouldn't necessarily trust judges and city councilmembers more than developers. It's not a problem of finding the right power structure that can operate without people being virtuous - it's how to operate virtuously. That's what stuck out to me when I saw the Strong Towns explanatory videos: it's people working together and having open, local discussions that remind me more of open-source software library "town hall" meetings than physical in-person town hall meetings - there's an understanding of the common good and a genuine freedom to be wrong when discussing with others.
I don't think planners/local govt. have no role. Especially where things like climate/infrastructure are issues (someone commented re Florida - that sounds like a legit concern to me.) I guess to some extent the form of growth is fine to regulate. I'm trying to make the point that there's no real way of determining when a place has "enough" development because most of the mature urban settlements we do have in America arose organically. Zoning as currently written has closed off our ability to allow that process to happen now.
Ok, yeah - so if I understand you, "enough growth" is not the right question because you're telling this Connecticut resident that it's not like there's a master plan to attain. A master plan would still imply what you're speaking against, which is a default "no more growth" stance which is broken by pockets of growth. Maybe two other metaphors might be growth like it happens in the body, for example, with constant replenishment of nutrients and cells, and in instances of strain (working out?) there is a different kind of growth that isn't simply maintenance. Or perhaps like a family, with slow growth of people punctuated by births and weddings.
Btw here in the FL panhandle, “over development” means poor planning. There’s been a lot of building in the last few years. Older homes with larger yards have been knocked down to build larger homes with smaller yards. We live near a very swampy area and those undeveloped and underdeveloped lots used to absorb the (very heavy) rain. Now our infrastructure is getting heavily taxed. Also, builders are building big fancy houses selling for over half a million dollars. We have pretty low crime (at least the violent type) and the city can’t afford to pay police officers enough to live here. I’ve been free market for most of my life, but seeing an important demographic of our economy blithely ignored has shaken my confidence in free market economics. We live between a military base and a resort area and those industries rely heavily on workers who don’t make six figures. It’s as you’ve said before—the bottom rings are getting cut off the ladder. We were only just getting by last year on a government service job (we’re a single income family) until my husband went into private industry.
There may be environmental reasons for reduced development - we have a part of Fairfax County with large minimum lots and stuff for water issues. Those can be used as excuses for NIMBYism but at least some of the time they're real concerns.
Is zoning a political issue in your locality? Is there any multifamily going up or just these big teardown-rebuild houses?
There are complexities here, to be fair. Monopolization and over-reliance on dubious conventional wisdom leading to every developer targetting the same demographics in a given area (though of course the zoning and related laws that prevent adaptive reuse are almost certainly part of the cause there), or wealth disparity and status displays leading to theoretically "high value" apartments that see little to no use and contribute negligibly to the local economy. The housing market, like that for education or health care, is more prone to failure than a true consumer market (especially when arranged in a way that demends new permanent structures more or less continuously).